


What Got Lost

by themegalosaurus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crisis of Faith, Episode: s11e21 All In The Family, Gen, Guilty Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6830965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I actually," Sam says to Chuck, stumbling over his words, "I, um, I prayed to you." He pauses, just for a moment, a tiny suspension of time. "Maybe it got lost in the spam."</i>
</p><p>A little coda to 11x21.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Got Lost

"I actually," Sam says to Chuck, stumbling over his words, "I, um, I prayed to you." He pauses, just for a moment, a tiny suspension of time. "Maybe it got lost in the spam."

He smiles, gestures nervously with his hands. He's trying to make it okay.

Dean kind of wants to punch him in the face.

It's stupid. It's stupid, because obviously it's fricking God that really needs a smack to the jaw. Wouldn't work, of course. Dean's punched angels before. It's a profoundly unsatisfying experience. But he can feel it, tingling at the backs of his knuckles; can hear the crunch of it, a heavy dull blow that might at least start to convey the weight of Dean's anger and disappointment and frustration. What the fuck.

"I can see that not everybody's happy about this," Chuck says, looking at Dean all regretful and Dean's so mad and so disappointed that he can barely speak.

"People prayed to you," he says. He doesn't say, " _Sam_ prayed to you," but he thinks it and he looks at Sam and he sees Sam's colour heighten, just a little; sees Sam look away. OK. Right. It makes Dean wanna howl. It's. After all. It's Sam who spent fucking _months_ of this year on his knees beside his bed, head bowed and hands clasped in nervous supplication while Dean watched him, so uncomfortable that eventually he had to interrupt. It's Sam who got poisoned and was so afraid for his life that he prayed - that he called out to God long before he spoke a word to Dean. It's Sam who went to confession when he was a little kid, who prayed 'every day' through their adolescence, through Stanford, through Jess; it's Sam who kept faith and kept faith and kept faith and now, now he's sitting there in front of God himself and he's just like "oh well, guess you probably had other things to think about, it's fine"?!

Dean wants to punch God in his smug fucking face for taking all that stuff Sam gave him and just parking it, letting it drop; for hearing that careful earnest voice and shutting down on it, ignoring it, letting Sam talk into the void.

Instead, humiliatingly, he cries; and tries not to look at Sam's shocked face, tries to stay calm and keep his voice from wavering and say a little, at least, of what he wants to get across about how fucking let down he feels. It doesn’t do much good. Chuck shirks the responsibility, denies any of the blame, and winds up reaming out Sam and Dean for whatever happened between Lucifer and Cas. Dean _saw_ Sam say no to Lucifer, again and again, and yet there he is, Dean’s soft little brother, mumbling to himself “That wasn’t exactly the plan…” as Chuck shakes his head disdainfully and flounces out of the room.

It leaves the two of them sat at the table in silence. Sam looks chastened, disappointed, and Dean’s still fuming and shaky and upset. Eventually, Sam breathes out, short and tight, and looks over. His face resolves itself into an expression of painfully sincere concern.

“You okay, Dean?” he says.

“Fucking peachy,” says Dean.

Sam shuts up.

Dean’s leg jiggles uncontrollably and his hands are wobbly so he bunches them into fists, taps them on the table. When he looks up, Sam’s looking right at him, big-eyed and scared.

“Fuck’s sake, Sam,” he says, and the anger’s back. “Why aren’t you mad? You used to get angry about shit. Remember that?”

Sam looks at him for just a beat longer, meets Dean’s gaze steady and then his whole face shifts, softens, drops. He turns his head and looks away.

“I can’t, Dean,” he says, thick. “I just… I don’t wanna start. I can’t. I can’t, or I don’t… It’s no good holding a grudge. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. I have to let it go.”

“Christ, Sam,” Dean says, and he’s planning to continue when he’s suddenly hit by a mack truck burden of unwanted déjà vu. Fuck. Fuck. In the memory, he’s exhausted and worn out just like today; hungry and sleepy, bodily and emotionally drained. He’s in his bedroom and Cas is there and Sam’s… Sam isn’t, Sam’s gone out to buy Dean greasy food that he’ll later deliver with the same meek, apologetic expression that he just proffered Chuck when he mentioned his prayers.

“Does Sam want a divorce?” Dean had asked Cas, not laughing, and Cas had said “I think it’ll take more than a hammer attack to make Sam leave.”

Typical Castiel, fucking subtlety of a brick, and the idea had made Dean wince even then. Now it’s lacerating, bolstered as it is by the thought of Sam’s frightened face throughout the long eighteen months that Dean carried the Mark; with the thought of his frozen, sick expression while Charlie’s body burned on the pyre and Dean told Sam it should have been him. Dean thinks of Sam, on his knees and ready to die, obedient in every respect but his refusal to give up on Dean.

Sam’s faith is dangerous. It scares Dean. He wants Sam to shut it over, shut it up: to scab himself safe with a protective shell. It’s that, specifically, that makes him want to hit his brother; makes him want to toughen Sam up with a fist or an angry word. Come on, Sam, he wants to say. Harden up. Fight back. But Sam won’t do it, is too fucking crazy determined not to, and instead he just sits and takes the blows and absorbs them up into himself, takes it, takes every hit like he always fucking has done, takes the punch and looks levelly back and asks Dean, asks God, “Are you done?”

Jesus. This is _Dean_ ; Dean’s done this, knows he has. He’s done it to Sam with his desperate protective fury, delivered in a fatal one-two manoeuvre alongside that other great flaw: his stupid emotionally fucked-up inability to say sorry, to take the risk and show his belly and make sure that Sam knows Dean was wrong. He’s afraid of apologising. He can’t do it. It’s too dangerous: he’s always afraid that admitting his guilt will somehow make Sam see the fault that he might not have noticed before. He’s afraid that Sam will turn to him finally and tell him ‘Dean, enough. You fucked up. Goodbye.’ It could happen. It almost happened – once – with Gadreel. So yeah, Dean doesn’t say it, and so instead, he’s coming to see, Sam must think - has to think, for his own survival - that he deserves every bit of the crap that gets thrown his way. Dean knows that about his brother. He’d just rather not see it. Sam’s worth so much and he thinks he’s worth shit, worth nothing at all.

“Sammy,” Dean says, careful, but he’s welling up again; and Sam looks at him with realization in his eyes.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he says. “I know. It’s behind us, it’s fine.”

“No, Sam,” Dean says, “no”; and then Sam starts to shake his head. It’s just a tiny movement but it’s there, it’s definite, and Sam puts up his hands in front of his face, open-palmed and defensive.

“Please, Dean,” he says. “I can’t start. I can’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sam's faith and his forgiveness are something I keep coming back to. It's admirable but it's also, I don't know, unhealthy. It doesn't say good things about how Sam feels. Anyway, I'd love to know how YOU feel: your comments are always welcome!!


End file.
